


Childhood Home

by pistol_red



Category: Taken Back: Finding Haley (2012)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Identity Issues, Mother-Daughter Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-01
Updated: 2013-07-01
Packaged: 2017-12-16 18:26:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/865181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pistol_red/pseuds/pistol_red
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Emma's not sure who she is anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Childhood Home

**Author's Note:**

> A short piece dealing with Emma's thoughts from the Lifetime movie Taken Back: Finding Haley (2012). This has spoilers for the film.

Emma, and she is Emma, she's always been Emma. Except not at the beginning...and maybe not now, anymore, is scared.

The woman, Karen, her...mother, stares at her like she is the answer to everything she's ever asked for or could possibly want. And maybe she is, that's the crazy thing. She literally means everything to a woman that she doesn't even know, Emma didn't even know she existed, and she's been everything to her for _years._

Emma's not sure who she is anymore. Her own name gets stuck on the tip of her tongue and “Haley” creeps through her brain like a persistent echo. It's like once she started she can't stop, and now all she can remember is eating the vanilla birthday cake that her mom, her _real_ mom made, covered with chocolate ice cream and caramel syrup. She got a new barbie doll later that day, one with red hair and a green dress, Emma had named her Cathy. Haley had named her Cathy. She _knew_ that now, and she wouldn't ever be able to forget it again.

Emma hated Karen. Just a little bit. Or a lot, even. She had to come here, she had to barge into her life, she had to ruin everything, she had to stalk her and her family and destroy everything Emma knew and loved and felt _safe_ with. Emma had her fights and her problems but she loved her parents; her mom and her dad, and she knew they loved her too, and she can't help but hate Karen a little for ruining that for her and making her second guess what had always been a given to her.

She hates Karen until she sees her again, until she sees how Karen looks at her another time, how her face kind of crumples in on itself in happiness, no, _joy, pure joy_ and Emma thinks, “oh, I put that there.” And it terrifies her. It terrifies her that this lady she doesn't know loves her that much. It terrifies her that this lady who loves her isn't really a stranger though, is the woman who carried her for nine months and loved her when she was little. Emma knows her, and that's the worst thing, really.

Because she already has a mom. She has a dad. Her mom, the one that _stole_ her, took her shopping and bought her barbies for her birthday too. She held her tight and put band-aids on her scrapes after freaking out for a good ten minutes when Emma was trying to learn how to ride a bike for the first time and just couldn't get the balance quite right. She was the lady who cuddled Emma up to her at night after she had a bad dream, made her feel safe and loved, made her blueberry pancakes on Sunday mornings. That was the lady with the gun, the lady who _killed_ someone.

Emma doesn't know what to do, she doesn't even know her own name. She's not Emma or Haley, she's not either one of her mother's daughter, and she's scared and she's shaken and she wants to go _home_. But her home isn't there anymore, her parents aren't there anymore, and she feels aimless and disconnected and hopeless.

She simultaneously feels everything at once and nothing at all, a strange, almost empty feeling swallowing her up after the roller coaster of emotions that she's been through.

She doesn't know what to do.

She's lost. But she looks up and Karen....her mother, is standing there, and that's when it really, really hits Emma; she's been lost for over ten years. That woman has been looking for her for over ten years. Emma's worth it to her, she's worth that much.

The woman....Karen, her mother, is pretty broken too, Emma figures. And it was the same woman broke Karen and hurt Emma, who tore everything up and took her away from where she was supposed to be. And Emma _loves_ her mom, loves the woman in the police car who killed someone with a gun and scared her senseless. But, but she broke Emma too, and her....mom, her biological mom, looks at her like she's been dead for years and just came back to life, just saw _hope_ for the first time, and Emma's words get stuck in her throat and her eyes blur a little and she thinks, “You're broken and I'm hurt, so maybe we'll work together?” And Karen doesn't say anything but Emma thinks she understands her, because she's her mother or because she's as big of a mess Emma is right now she doesn't know, but she looks right at her and smiles a smile that Emma recognizes, and she thinks, with a smidgen of hope, that maybe this will be alright after all.  


End file.
